PHOTOGRAVURE

The earliest forms of photogravure were developed in the 1830's. Because of its high quality and richness, photogravure was used for both original fine art prints and for photo-reproduction of works from other media such as paintings. Photogravure registers a wide variety of tones, through the transfer of etching ink from an etched copper plate to special dampened paper run through an etching press. The unique tonal range comes from photogravure's variable depth of etch, that is, the shadows are etched many times deeper than the highlights.

I find photogravure to be the ultimate printing method. Although it is very time consuming, with each image taking about 3 days to produce, the outcome is an image with a wonderfully rich texture that cannot be produced by any other means. It truly makes each image a work of art. Once the plate is made I print a limited edition of 5-15 prints from each plate centered on 22"x30" (56cm x 76cm) archival intaglio paper. The size of the actual image ranges from 8" x 10" (20cm x 25cm) to 11" x 14" (28cm x 35cm). Each print is numbered and is accompanied by a certificate to verify the limited edition. Due to the time consuming nature of this process I only have a few photogravures available and once an edition is sold they will not get reprinted.